How do I diagnose a slow shutdown cycle on my computer? It takes over 5 minutes for the computer to shutdown and it used to take 10 seconds. I can't remember what I installed that started to cause this problem. Any ideas?

Anti-virus software perhaps? Anyway you can see most of what is running in the background by doing CTR+ALT+DEL Then you can "end task" one program at a time (except for Explorer and Systray). After each end task do a shutdown and try to find the busy body.

This is because once in a while (and more often than we'd like) certain buggy (especially older) programs hang, not allowing you to exit the Windows GUI. One (temporary) solution to this problem is to perform the "three finger salute" (Alt + Ctrl + Del) and click End Task to force the incriminated (locked up) application to exit, and then shut down/restart Windows as usual. But I found a better (permanent) solution: Run Regedit.exe and go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\desktop In the right hand pane look for the "AutoEndTasks" String. Create it if not present: right-click -> select New -> String -> name it "AutoEndTasks" (without typing the quotes). Now double-click on "AutoEndTasks" and give it the value of 1 to enable the "forced program exit" feature. From now on, whenever you want to shut down/restart/reboot Windows 9x, you won't be "greeted" by those error messages anymore. You can also disable the "forced exit" by giving the "AutoEndTasks" String the value of 0, or by deleting it. These Registry changes do not require a system restart. Good luck Brad.........

Or try this simpler one... Came to know of this effective step thru trial & method in my comp. 1. Try deleting all the crap files (recycle bin, temp folder, temp internet file, cookies & stuff) before shutting. 2. some progs (usually of utilities) run & show in systray (taskbar) (eg. Infra red detector, antivirus) or run in CTRL+ALT+DEL window (as mentioned above). Clos them all. 3. If you hav Oracle8 on your system, it slows down all sys activities as it runs in background. Check that out.